If Obama loses we will be treated to whining about how it was just because of his race. If Obama wins we will have four years of how disagreement equals racism.
Duke I think you make an excellent analysis. However, I’d fault you on half of the Clinton/Richardson ticket. I don’t think the Clintons will ever forgive Bill Richardson for switching over to Obama early on. I’m still hoping that Richardson might be our president some day.
Especially important for Democrats. The average age of the liberal wing is 75.5 while the conservative wing is only 61. Kennedy, the swing vote is 72. Scalia is the oldest conservative at 72 and would probably asked to be propped up on the bench after death before letting a Democrat fill his seat.
My point, basically being, Democrats have nothing really to gain but to shore up the liberal wing of the court, but they have a lot to lose.
No we don’t. We’ll just recycle the same ones the GOP used when they fucked up and controlled both branches for 5 years. 
As for my own…
Just about every word a presidential candidate speaks for an entire year before the election is now taped and documented. I think “flip-flops” will become old hat. Every candidate will be guilty of it and there was undoubtedly be video evidence of such.
I think Clinton might need Richardson a bit, though: she’d need a westerner, preferably a Washington outsider, with foreign policy experience to balance her ticket. Richardson fills that role. Plus she can pretend that she’s “put politics aside” by selecting a former rival.
Well, you might be right, but I don’t think they’re that likely to forgive and forget. I actually thought for sure Obama had promised Richardson the Veep spot when he jumped so early.
It’s a bit of a poisoned chalice either way - the President gets to really lead for 18 months before he has to start running for re-election, and whoever wins is gonna have a huge fight in front of them with Iraq and the financial crisis occupying most of their time. They won’t have time for the majority of their agendas at all, they’ll spend too much time just trying to fix problems. IMO, the US government works best with three branches in opposition, so that’s the best outcome I can imagine.
If Obama Wins:
Same problems of the last 8 years with a majority for one party in both houses and in the Executive - fast ramrodding of deeply flawed, not well considered, and poisonous bills because of lack of opposition. Congress’s approval ratings go even further into the toilet, and partisan infighting reaches the highs seen in Clinton’s terms. We gradually pull ourselves out of foreign adventures and slowly work our way out of financial crisis and back into the black, but have to fight partisan battles every step of the way to get there. Obama gets re-elected in 2012, but Dems lose the majority in Congress.
If McCain wins:
The Democrats in Congress scream bloody murder and retaliate with legislative warfare. Everything McCain tries to do is shot down or destroyed in committee; his vetoes are overturned. He is seen as powerless and weak, especially after being effectively forced to flip-flop on Iraq and bring the troops home in 16 months anyways as Congress dries up the funding. Congress’s approval ratings drop as they’re seen (and portrayed by RW media) as obstructionist but Dems maintain control of the House and Senate in the mid-terms although with tight majorities. 2012 - McCain bows out; Palin wins the nom but loses the elections, and the Democrats retain control of the House but lose control of the Senate. Obama wins the Presidency.
2016 - Not being saddled with the debt and failed policy of the past 8 years, Obama can run on his policy, not on just not being Republican, and since he’s starting from a much cleaner slate than in 2008 he can actually get stuff done. Dems lose control of the House and Senate, with a strong majority of Fiscally Conservative Republicans beefing up the Republican rolls, but Obama’s policies win enough bi-partisan support to pass with strong oversight from Republicans in Congress.
So, you don’t believe the Obamas when they say this is a 1-shot deal?
No, I don’t believe that. I think if Obama loses in 2008 he’ll be a shoe-in for 2012 and will be ‘drafted’ even if he doesn’t really want to run. I also think he’s a standard bearer that Democrats haven’t seen the like of for quite a while he’s got large parts of the population excited in a way they haven’t been and actually can string coherent sentences together and certainly doesn’t appear weak the way others have.
Palin the same, but IMO she’s far more of an empty suit and can’t carry a POTUS run all on her own against any sort of internal or external competition no matter her street cred with the Social Conservatives.
I just wish Colin Powell would run for something; I’d vote for him in a New York minute.
Huh. Well, I think that if he loses he’ll be blamed for his color losing a “sure” Democratic election and he’ll turn into one of those eternal “if only” candidates that people moon about later. Like Gore.
I do try to be colour blind in most things, but you could have a point. I’d hate to think of someone as remarkable as Obama calling on the race card to blame his defeat on, but it could be a very real possibility amongst some of his more adamant followers and who knows what the Dems leadership thinks about these things - I’m not sure they understand actually how to win 50 states anymore.
I believe Gore lost because he was too arrogant and thought it was a sure thing, and also because he was running with the legacy of Clinton around his neck which wasn’t entirely a good thing at the time - more of the same, the country did not want. Kerry lost for similar reasons of arrogance - he and the Dems just couldn’t understand how or why anyone would vote for Bush, and therefore alienated that section of the electorate, and that alienation was stage-managed and taken advantage of very well by Rove and the RNCC. That, and Kerry was a milktoast candidate at best - his only strength was not being George Bush. Obama’s got a healthy dose of that arrogance himself, but the Republicans have dug themselves such a deep hole and are so low in opinion polls I don’t see that is as much of a disadvantage as in 2000 or 2004.
:dubious:
If he did, no one else did. The media hype was that after 8 years of a Dem in office, the winds of change were blowing for the Republicans, and there was this unbeatable guy from Texas, real aisle-crossing consensus-making and a crowd-pleaser, George W Bush, odds-on favorite, freaking destined to win.
Now, McCain peeled a lot of the polish off of that early patina by doing well against Bush in the Repub primaries. Bush looked less inevitable. And the meme about him being too stupid to talk got started.
But the attitude was somewhere between “Bush is inevitable” and “Gore actually has a chance”.
Sure thing for Gore? Where? Who?
The Supreme Court is the most obvious and serious of course.
Beyond that, I expect mostly business as usual either way. Meaning deeply partisan idiocy from both sides for the whole four years. Ramping up to an even more bitter (and somehow even longer) 2012 campaign. Vetoes, over-rides, filibusters, shameless finger-pointing. You know … DC. I don’t expect either candidate to really change or accomplish much. 2012 will still have US troops in 2-3 wars, enormous budget deficits, crumbling infrastructure, no univ. healthcare … and abortion, guns and jesus will still be THE issues to run on. Either way, America continues on the path of being bitterly divided.
If Obama loses, I don’t think he will run in 2012.
If Obama wins … I’ll be genuinely shocked. I will have to take back some hateful things I have said about America since 2004. After America officially approved of GWB’s first term, I wrote off any expectation of sanity or decency around here. Right now, I really don’t believe this country is capable of electing a D president. That’s simply not who America is. On the other hand, if America now proves that it can learn from its mistakes (even if it has to make them twice in a row to do so…), I’ll start the process of forgiveness. I’ll be able to bring myself to donate to a D candidate without thinking I’m better off burning that money. I just can’t take America seriously enough to do it this year. A McCain win would of course only reinforce what I already know about Americans.
If McCain loses OR wins, I don’t think he will run (or breathe) in 2012. Palin or someone else moves up. I will not be the least bit surprised if she serves her own 8 years as president after being VP. She is *perfect *for America. If McPalin loses, she goes home to Alaska, loses her next election there (if she’s not removed sooner), and is forever remembered as the bad joke she is. That might seem contradictory to the statement before it, but either is equally likely. If she wins they sculpt her as the savior of the party, and dumb as she is, it’ll work. If she loses, it was all her fault.
Public financing of the presidential campaign is dead. Obama’s decision not to participate has legitimized opting out, and no future candidate will want to accept the spending restrictions.
**Peanut Gallery ** pretty much summed up my opinions. I’ll add that McCain being elected will further smear America’s international reputation; it will be a seal of approval on Bush’s actions. It will make it clear that our stupid and evil actions are not due to having a stupid and evil President who acts against our will, but to having a stupid and evil President because we are as a nation stupid and evil. Bush is President primary because he is a reflection of American’s nature; stupid, greedy, ruthless, amoral, ignorant, delusional, fanatic and brutal. “Don’t blame all Americans for what Bush did” will become even more threadbare an excuse.
And I do think that Obama will lose; our voting system is corrupt ( Diebold ) and I consider America much too racist to elect a black man President. As often happens, I expect that a lot of people who claim to be Obama voters to switch at the ballots and vote for McCain purely over race.
No matter who wins, the long term implications of this election will include hammering out a new primary schedule that both sides of the aisle will be more eager than usual to stick to. I may well be accused of tinfoil hattery, but I honestly don’t believe McCain would have had such an easy path to victory if MI and FL dems hadn’t been told their votes weren’t going to count, and allowed to vote in the republican primary. (there are quite a few claims that exit polls for the republican primaries showed that 1/3rd of voters in those states’ identified themselves as democrats) Hopefully states or parties will press the issue and ensure that no voters are disenfranchised/given free rein to meddle with the other party’s nommination in elections to come.
Speaking of disenfranchisement, it should also be interesting to see if there are the usual cries of supposed voter disenfranchisement from the left after the election now that they’ve shown a documented willingness to discount the primary votes of two entire states’ worth of their own voters. Somehow, I don’t think this will stop the common hue and cry. (You might not think primaries are as big a deal as the federal election, but a lot of people do.)
Oh, and after the inevitable diebold scandal in November and December, the company will finally fold, and states will go back to optical scanner/other paper ballots.
If McCain wins, we’ll hear four years of whining and complaining from the left about how he’s just like Bush (even though he’s not), and people were too stupid to elect someone who could have gotten us out of our messes.
If Obama wins, we’ll hear four years of whining and complaining from the right about how he’s just like Clinton (even though he’s not), and people were too foolish to elect someone who could have gotten us out of our messes.